Guv Gets Churched On Charter Schools

If Paul the Apostle asked for financial assistance on his way to preach in Rome. So can Varick Memorial Zion Church ask the state for financial assistance on the way to establishing the Booker T. Washington Academy charter school.

That theme—that you can serve God and do good only in the context of working with and accepting the help of others—was the heart of a high- profile Palm Sunday sermon at the historic Varick Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church.

The founder of the academy, a proposed charter school, Varick Rev. Eldren D. Morrison, drew some powerful listeners, including the mayor, the governor, and the head of the state Department of Education, Stefan Pryor.

Click here for a story about four new charter schools that are being proposed for the New Haven area, including the Booker T. Washington Academy.

All are seeking Hartford’s blessing, and bucks, including 20 others across the state.

Varick’s chief of staff and one of the event’s organizers, Jesse Phillips, said the attendance of state officials, including the first time a sitting governor has come to Varick in 30 years, was “to show his support for charters, not necessarily [specifically] for Varick but charter schools in general.”

The academy’s application has not yet been filed. Organizers expect to meet the state’s April 1 deadline, said Chaka Felder-McEntire, the vice-chair of the academy-in-formation’s board.

Concerns that the church is seeking public funding for a school that might have religious content should be allayed because the academy is being structured as totally separate from the church, Felder-McEntire said.

“In terms of finances, structure, and maintenance, it’s a separate entity, with its own 501(c) 3,” she added. Rev. Morrison sits on the academy’s board as chairman as well.

As he toured the church with the governor, Pryor said he could not make a comment on the Booker T. Washington application because he has not seen it.

“I’d like to say I am impressed with the intensity of effort to produce this application,” he added.

Felder-McEntire said no location has been decided upon for the school except that it will be in the Dixwell or Newhallville neighborhood. Plans have been refined so that if funding is successful, the school will open not with one grade, as previously announced, but with 144 kids from pre-K to first grade. That’s in response to needs expressed by the community, she added.

Back in church, before Morrison began his stem-winder, the three elected officials each gave brief sermons on general Palm Sunday themes. The subtexts echoed with the idea of community’s grassroots pursuit of justice and choice in education as a way of fulfilling a greater plan.

Pryor drew a connection to Passover and invoked the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, famous for linking arms with Martin Luther King to the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches.

“My legs were praying,” Pryor quoted Heschel as describing his march alongside King..

Mayor John DeStefanooffered his own sermonette on Holy Week’s charging us to remember what’s of highest importance—- the welfare of kids—and not to let the disappointments and surface failures (crucifixion) deter from goal. At that point, Morrison rose and said, “I’m going to give the mayor a preacher’s license.” “I’m looking for work,” retired the mayor, who plans to retire at the end of this year after two decades in office.

The governor wasn’t afraid to touch on the hard sadness of aspects of the Easter story: “Let us not be despondent. Jesus knew when he entered Jerusalem that his days were numbered.” But leaders would rise up to spread the word despite setbacks, and despondency defeated through grassroots action, he said.

It was left to Rev. Morrison to connect the dots.

Taking his text from Romans, Chapter 15, verse 22, he said, “when you are serving God, you got to acknowledge you need help,” and accept it when it is offered.

Shifting niftily from holy text to homey vignettes, he brought the house down with his personal story of offering to use his credit card to pay for gas for a young woman, near him at the filling pump. He observed how she kept having her credit card rejected. She clearly had no credit or money, but when he offered to help her, she said, “No thank you!”

“I’ve got a vision of Booker T. Washington Academy, and for economic development [around the present Varick site], but I need some help.”

Felder-McEntire said after the application is submitted, organizers should hear by June. If all goes well, the school will open in August, 2014, she said.

In the meantime, the entire church, well over a thousand members, will assemble as one body for Easter Sunday services next week at Hillhouse High.

Jesse Philips said he hopes that two other powerful political figures, state Rep. Toni Walker and state Sen. Toni Harp, who co-chair the state legislature’s appropriations committee, will be in the audience for that day’s sermon.

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Comments

posted by: Threefifths on March 24, 2013 8:36pm

Just as Esau in his day sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.Black Minster have sold out to the white political machine.Hoiw come these black minster are not leading the people to protest the cuts that Dan Malloy will be puting on the middleclassand the poor.I here Dan Malloy talking about jesus,But jesus would never be able to turn his back on the poor.I love when politicians quote the name of DR.KING.If king was here today he wpould lead a poor people march on them.Remember Esau. Once he sold out for a mess of pottage he never got his possessions back.

My bad.It was left to Rev. Morrison to connect the dots.Taking his text from Romans, Chapter 15, verse 22, he said, “when you are serving God, you got to acknowledge you need help,” and accept it when it is offered.

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

posted by: RCguy on March 25, 2013 2:47am

Thank you, Threefifths. Amen! Amen! Amen!

posted by: Noteworthy on March 25, 2013 1:33pm

The headline should have read: Pimping the Pages (of Scripture.)

If Jesus was at Varick on Sunday, He would have thrown the money changers out of the temple as he did 2,000 years ago, at Passover and just before his crucifixion and rising from the dead. On one of the most holy days in all of Christendom, one after the other, the speakers disturbingly used this sacred time for their own political, social or educational coin.

Education Secretary Pryor tried to link Passover and social justice; Mayor DeStefano says the message of Palm Sunday is not to let surface failures like the Crucifixion deter us from the goal of welfare of children; Gov. Malloy says the sadness of Jesus’ last days was defeated by the grass roots activism of believers who would rise up and spread the Word; Rev. Morrison says the message of Palm Sunday is that if you’re serving God, you must ask for and be willing to accept help.

They were all there to exchange coin in the temple in an orchestrated show of mutual importance and dependency and to a man, missed the point of Palm Sunday. The cash register must have had a loud Ka-Ching.

If it wasn’t church, wasn’t Palm Sunday, wasn’t Passover, wasn’t the last days of Jesus which would lead to His suffering, crucifixion as the ultimate atonement for the sins of the world; wasn’t that this marks the season when Christians celebrate His rising from the dead on the third day to ascend into Heaven where he advocates on behalf of all of us then and now, this service wouldn’t bother me. As it is laid out in this article, the service and those who participated in it are offensive in every sense of the Word.